The Distance of a Shout

Ondaatje (A Year of Last Things) presents a superb and comprehensive collection of selected works, or “condensary of time,” that crystallizes for devotees and new readers alike the poet’s lifelong devotion to place. “From now on I will drink my landscapes,” he writes, “here, pour me a cup of Spain.” Family, friends, and lovers move through the entries, as do canoes on countless rivers, “We move/ over blind mercury, feel the muscle,/ within the river, the blade/ weave in dark water.” Pages teem with flora and fauna, as well as “the aura of dogs/ in trickster skin.” Exquisite attention to sensory details (“The cabin// its tin roof/ a wind-run radio”) lends the poems a philosophical dimension: “We go to the stark places of the earth/ and find moral questions everywhere.” Restless, the poet asks: “Now we are less. How do we become more?” In answer, this book offers a sustained ars poetica: “And that is all this writing should be then./ The beautiful formal things caught at the wrong moment/ so they are shapeless, awkward/ moving to the clear.” Readers will revel in this astonishing volume. (Feb.)